Tag Archives: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Playbill believes it knows how an American National Theater should look… and why America needs one: …unlike most nations (the U.K., France, Germany, Japan, China, and India among many others), the U.S. has no government-sponsored dramatic company and no single building that houses America’s brand of theatre. Why? What would a national theatre look like in America? Or, are we better off without one? Many ...

HowlRound: Cultural critic Eli Keel defends the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s decision to translate Shakespeare into contemporary English: …why would you discourage passing on this gift, even if it is in a different form than when you first received it? And project director, Lue Douthit, writes a lengthy explanation of the project. But Kevin Delin has had other ideas about what the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is ...

OPB Video – This one-hour episode explores the origins and the evolution of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival – how one man’s vision for a holiday event grew to become the economic mainstay of the city of Ashland and a major presence in American Theater. Watch online: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival from Oregon Experience. On demand, streaming video from OPB.

There’s a modern myth stating that modern audiences won’t appreciate art unless it’s created in modern technology. The art must be accessible to the audience. So films are colorized. Or recropped for a widescreen. Or re-released in 3-D. So says the modern myth. Imagine we needed to repaint the Sistine Chapel because Michelangelo didn’t have Prussian or cobalt blue on his palette. Ridiculous, right? Painting ...

AMERICAN THEATRE: “Though our ‘Play on!’ commissioning project has met with some vocal disapproval, the work of translating Shakespeare is grounded in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s core values—and our love for the Bard.” – Bill Rauch, artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

The New Yorker: Last week, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced that it had commissioned thirty-six playwrights to translate all of Shakespeare’s plays into modern English. The backlash began immediately, with O.S.F. devotees posting their laments on the festival’s Facebook page. “What a revolting development!” “Is there really a need to translate English into Brain Dead American?” Critics of the project may have forgotten the long ...

OSF: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced today the launch of a 39-play, three-year commissioning project, Play on! 36 playwrights translate Shakespeare. Supported by a generous grant from the Hitz Foundation and inspired by long-time OSF patron Dave Hitz’s passion for Shakespeare, the project is led by Lue Morgan Douthit, OSF’s director of literary development and dramaturgy. http://bit.ly/1JT4DPt

The New York Times: Many in the theater community have known that this day was coming, though it doesn’t lessen the shock. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has decided that Shakespeare’s language is too difficult for today’s audiences to understand. It recently announced that over the next three years, it will commission 36 playwrights to translate all of Shakespeare’s plays into modern English. http://nyti.ms/1JT3Tdg

WSJ: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival will announce next week that it has commissioned translations of all 39 of the Bard’s plays into modern English, with the idea of having them ready to perform in three years. Yes, translations—because Shakespeare’s English is so far removed from the English of 2015 that it often interferes with our own comprehension. http://on.wsj.com/1M4Zrty